Italians from Drapers. great packages!..... this one did fabulous I had bought 2 packages from them the other also did well, I po-po it as compared to this one but when I look at it compared to a normal late start hive it did fine.
That is complete hive Box and all. Sombody mentione Tare on the box.... I tried, but every time I got close to getting all the bees in the air, another one would land and I had to start over..... :-D
2 deeps, VERY honeybound... down to one and a half frames of brood in OCT.... made me nervous, my thought was then that a fall die off would reduce teh cluster to normal and I would have a bunch of full frames to use for nucs this spring. Once again they outsmarted me... but hey I have a great starting colony for poliniation.
One thing thats interesting is that this hive despite pollen patties and great consumption, has no brood patch yet. I don't know if its because of the stress on the hive or? I didn't locate the queen (too cold to spend the time) but assume if she was gone they would have stareted some queen cells.